Themistocles - a Biography

Transcript:

Okay, so I think I am going to enjoy this episode on a really personal level

 because I grew up in a naval town and my dad was in the navy,

 taught me all about British naval history and he also loved ancient Greek history.

 So he used to buy me storybooks to get me interested as well.

 And the man we're going to talk about today was in one of those storybooks

 is almost a kind of hero, a real life Greek hero.

 But I have to admit to you that when I was reading these books as a kid,

 I thought his name was pronounced THEM IH STOCK ULS

 So maybe I'm not the most qualified person to talk about him.

 That's why I have a very special guest for you this week.

 Would you like to introduce yourself, please?

 Hello, I think, well, I think first off Themistocles is a much better way

 to pronounce his name than I normally do, which is traditionally Themistocles

 or Themistocles or Themistocles.

 Let's go with any of those.

 Any of those work, I think, and we can pick and choose as we go through.

 So my name is Michael Scott.

 I'm a professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick,

 where I'm also currently the Pro Vice Chancellor for International,

 which means I oversee all of the international activities of the university.

 And I have long been interested in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds,

 writing about them both in academic works and in public facing history books,

 as well as kind of working through different social media channels

 to communicate my love of the ancient world with the wider world

 and also through radio and TV documentaries.

 Wonderful.

 And it should be mentioned as well, the book Themistocles.

 We'll be linking the book in the episode description because you should read it.

 But before you read it, listen to this first.

 Don't switch off and just go and read the book.

 Definitely listen to this first.

 This is the only place you're going to hear him called Themisstockles!

 So with all of my biography episodes, I like to start from the beginning.

 And I always ask my expert guests about childhood and what we know about childhood.

 And I know that the answer is probably, we don't know a lot.

 But what do we know about Themistocles' birth, his family, and his childhood?

 So you're absolutely right.

 No one records anyone's birth and early years because we don't know

 who's going to turn out to have exciting and interesting careers

 worth writing biographies about, right?

 So childhood stories of people who go on to do famous things,

 particularly in antiquity, are always kind of written from the benefit of hindsight.

 And so we do have a number of stories that are told to us about Themistocles

 in his early years, but they are all from the perspective of

 we know what kind of person he's going to grow into.

 And let's focus on some of those events from his early years,

 or particular character traits that he may have demonstrated

 that seem to sort of show up the early signs of that character that he will become.

 In that vein, we hear plenty of stories of his intelligence, his quick-wittedness,

 his sort of willingness to not just accept the standard norm of way of doing things,

 but to push the boundaries and try and find different ways of doing things.

 His willingness to engage in debate and discussion and argument

 with his fellow peers at school.

 His tendency to go beyond the accepted norms in terms of behavior

 and possibly get into a bit of trouble as a result.

 And there's a whole wonderful sketch.

 If we go centuries down the line and we get to sort of the third century

 and we read the material of a guy called Libanus of Antioch

 who likes constructing mock court speeches for people to practice on

 who wanted to go and become orators.

 And he has two speeches, one written by Themistocles against his father

 and one written by Themistocles' father against Themistocles.

 Both of them complaining at one another about how they've misunderstood one another

 during their growing up.

 And his dad is sort of tearing his hair out in this speech

 about how badly behaved Themistocles has been.

 And there's even a story at this point in Libanus

 that he ends up actually cutting him off.

 The dad cuts off Themistocles because he's behaved so poorly.

 But all of that probably goes into the realm of fantasy a bit.

 What is I think really surprising and unexpected

 of what we hear about his childhood and his birth

 is for somebody who becomes so central to the Athenian story.

 He actually begins life at the sort of last quarter of the sixth century BCE.

 So he's born in 524 BCE.

 Actually at a very liminal, disadvantaged, non-traditional elite background.

 So his dad is from a good family.

 I guess in modern terms we'd call it middle class, maybe middle upper perhaps.

 But absolutely not one of the elite aristocratic families,

 which at that point in time in the second half of the sixth century

 are really ruling Athens.

 This is no democracy.

 Democracy hasn't been invented.

 There's no concept of that.

 Athens is under the rule of a tyrant in this part of the sixth century.

 So Themistocles's family is not one of those families.

 He's not from one of those families that gets traditionally a look in

 in the power politics of Athens.

 And even more than that, the stories around his mom are really interesting

 because they all portray her as non-Athenian.

 She's not an Athenian citizen.

 And then some sources portray her as being sort of from just outside

 the Athenian world.

 Some sources portray her as coming from just outside the Greek world.

 And some sources portray her as being kind of wholly foreign

 from effectively another universe.

 And even some go so far as to make her out to be not just

 a non-Athenian citizenship, but actually a very low birth.

 And in terms of her work, actually working as a prostitute.

 The sources are conceptualizing and giving us a picture of Themistocles

 when his life starts.

 He is not from one of the best families of Athens.

 And more than that, his family or his status in society is even more liminal

 because he's got an Athenian father, Athenian citizen father,

 but definitely a non-Athenian mother.

 And depending on which source you believe, perhaps a very non-Athenian mother.

 So he is what is technically referred to sort of in the ancient Greek at the time

 as a kind of anothos, we translate it as bastard child.

 But it means sort of someone who's got one foot in Athenian society

 and one foot out of Athenian society.

 And so again, when we see that story of him at birth,

 there is absolutely no way that if you were putting bets on,

 you know, people like that,

 that you would put a bet on Themistocles to amount to anything of note in the future.

 I think it's really interesting that the sources are really hammering that home.

 So Athens is changing during his childhood.

 Can you just explain a little bit about what it was like when he was born

 as to what it was like when he was reaching maturity?

 Yeah, I mean, I think this you pick up on the second really kind of crucial

 aspect of his early years, without which I don't think Themistocles

 would have gone on to be the famous character that he became.

 Because if society had stayed as it was when he was born,

 he wouldn't, I don't think have gotten looking

 actually in the power politics of the day.

 And it's really only thanks to the changing politics around him as he grows up.

 Athens transforms into a society that can allow and enable someone like Themistocles to rise.

 So, you know, when he's 10, down to sort of 514 BCE,

 that's when the next tyrant ruler,

 so the one who was ruling when Themistocles was born,

 has died and passed sort of power to his son and his two sons in reality.

 And in 514, when Themistocles is 10,

 one of those tyrants is killed in the great Panathenaic festival of Athens.

 And that initiates a period of real cruel tyranny in Athens by the remaining brother,

 which leads pretty quickly by 5087.

 So when Themistocles is turning 16, you know, he's not quite an adult,

 he's, you know, he's aware at this stage to the great uprising in Athens when we're told by the

 sources that, you know, the whole of Athens literally rose up in a mass riot to corner

 this remaining tyrant, to corner the forces that he'd sort of deployed to keep him in power

 and chucked them all out of the city.

 And it's at that moment when Themistocles is 16 and in 5087 that an older sort of,

 elite aristocratic statesman called Cleisthenes steps forward and suggests a new political

 system for Athens, which gives a lot more equal power to more people within the society.

 Now, this is what will become democracy, but no one at that stage was using that term.

 They were instead referring to it as a system of isonomia or equality before the law,

 as it translates.

 And we can't underestimate how much of a massive change and a massive step that was.

 And as Themistocles becomes 18, he becomes an adult, becomes this,

 steps into that kind of position of a citizen,

 Athens is starting to have real military victories against other Greek cities and states,

 which it never really has had before.

 I mean, we're so used to thinking of Athens as the big player in Greek history, aren't we?

 But actually, it's okay, but it's nothing special.

 You know, it's nothing special.

 And really, it's only at the very end of the sixth century,

 in these years, immediately after this change in its political system,

 that it starts to really have these quite extraordinary victories.

 And everyone goes, whoa, you know, what's changed?

 What's made Athens so successful?

 And people start talking about the political system being responsible for that success

 because everyone is now invested in the success of the city and everyone's fighting

 for themselves as much as they're fighting for a ruler.

 So that's pretty heady stuff for anyone to turn 18 in.

 And I think it's absolutely fundamental that as Themistocles begins his career,

 if you like, as an adult and as an active citizen within this new society,

 suddenly everything has changed and things are possible that were never possible before.

 I think one of my favorite anecdotes from Plutarch's biography

 is when a man from Seriphos says to him, later in his life, obviously, but says to him,

 you wouldn't be who you are without democracy.

 And he replied, it's a slightly snarky reply, but he essentially says, well, yeah.

 Do we see him then in this really early period immediately start thinking,

 even at the age of about 18, the world has suddenly opened up to me,

 I'm really going to grab this opportunity and take it?

 We would love to know more about what happens really during that turning point of the

 6th century and the first decade of the 5th.

 So from about 506 when he turns 18 through to the late 490s, that's the period

 when he's going through his 20s.

 And he, we think, must have been absolutely dead set on, exactly as you say,

 taking advantage of this new system and rising up through it.

 But we hear almost nothing of how he climbed that kind of early political ladder,

 if you want to call it.

 But given his background, given the changing system around it,

 he can really only have done it, I think, through showing his capabilities

 in the different roles that he was entrusted with and being entrusted slowly,

 slowly with bigger and more important roles.

 Now we get glimpses of it.

 So we hear that at some point during this period, he had the role of

 water commissioner in Athens.

 Now that doesn't sound like a particularly exciting role.

 Within the context of Athens, Greece, it's a hot place.

 Water's incredibly important for a big city and actually ensuring that the water

 keeps running is utterly essential.

 And if you muck that up, your reputation is toast, right?

 So he seems to have done a pretty good job at some pretty good important meaty roles

 where you actually had to deliver.

 You couldn't just stand there and talk.

 You actually had to deliver.

 And we say all of that because when he starts to come back into focus again

 for us, and we start to hear more about some of the roles he's occupying,

 is at the end of the 490s.

 He turns 31 and he's elected chief magistrate of the city, archon of the city.

 You had to be 30 as a minimum age to hold this role, and he got it at 31.

 That says that he's risen pretty quickly and he's gained a reputation

 for being a capable individual within this evolving city-state of Athens

 pretty quickly during the 490s.

 So he certainly hasn't been hanging around not doing much during his 20s.

 He's clearly been putting that to good use and working hard to create a reputation

 for himself that puts him in a place to be elected to this really important

 magistracy role in the city by the time he's 31.

I think it's really interesting that the sources big up his childhood

 anecdotes, but they don't really go into detail about his career,

 which I'm assuming there would have been some kind of archive

 mentioning his early career.

 Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting, isn't it?

 And it says something.

 I think it says two things.

 One is that his career and life and fame will go on to be so

 associated with two later moments in his career that everything else sort

 of pales into insignificance.

 And so the sources who talk about him and his life and his career

 that are closest to him in time, so that's Greek historians like

 Herodotus and Thucydides, are really fixated on how he plays into

 the bigger narratives they're interested in and to these kind of key

 moments that he becomes associated with.

 They're not telling the biography of Themistocles, they're saying

 what did Themistocles do of importance in the story of,

 in Herodotus' case, of the war between the Greeks and the Persians.

 When you do get to biographies as we would understand them,

 you're already centuries down the line and much, much, much further

 removed and you're getting towards a writing of biography by people

 like Plutarch and others, you know, Plutarch's fame,

 Life of Themistocles, where these are constructed as lessons, you know,

 they're stories of people's lives that contain lessons to be learned

 from, from those who want to go on to achieve great things.

 So Plutarch likes to focus on the positives and the big, you know,

 the successful points.

 So he glosses over this 490s period, perhaps because by that stage

 no one knew, centuries down the line, the information just wasn't

 by that stage carried forward, and also because it just wasn't

 of importance to him in the sense of, again, he was attracted

 to the real high points in the career in order to prove Themistocles

 such a valuable character to learn from.

 So he becomes Archon in 493.

 Can you explain a little bit about what that job involved,

 what the expectations were?

 And do we know how he actually fulfilled his role?

 Yeah.

 So the role of Archon was a very old one within the Athenian state.

 It had existed back in the time of tyranny before that,

 and it had been morphing.

 And there were, in fact, more than one Archon,

 a more than one magistrate.

 By the time Themistocles is coming into the role,

 there are three main Archons.

 There is an Archon who is sort of tasked with overseeing

 a lot of the religious activity of the city and maintaining

 a good positive relationship between the gods and Athens.

 Then there is the Archon who is much more in the military sphere,

 and he takes on the lead role in the battles that Athens has to fight.

 And then there's the Archon sort of in the middle,

 which is what he is, what Themistocles is,

 who's tasked with and really got responsibility over

 the judicial and political kind of running of the city.

 And actually that year that Themistocles was Archon,

 we know he had a pretty major piece of kind of politics on his plate,

 which was a trial for treason of a man called Miltiades.

 Miltiades had been quite a high profile individual,

 military general type in Athenian society.

 He had been fundamentally involved in what's known as the Ionian revolt.

 So this was back in 499, the Persian Empire just across the Aegean Sea,

 massive, huge, burnt off of an empire.

 A few cities on its western coast, so the coast of Asia Minor of modern-day Turkey,

 had decided to sort of rise up and rebel.

 And the Athenians, who are beginning, you know,

 that's a little bit bolshy one has to say,

 they decided to send a couple of ships to aid this rebellion,

 you know, that was somehow going to rise up and take down the Persian king.

 Now, of course, this rebellion fails completely.

 The Ionian revolt is quashed by the Persian king,

 and he's sitting there going, who are these Athenians?

 And how do they have the temerity to aid my enemies?

 And it's that action by the Athenians that sort of provokes

 the Persian invasion in 490, which turns into the Battle of Marathon.

 But at this stage, Miltiades was involved in the revolt,

 and then sort of ended up back in Athens.

 And then because of the politicking sort of back in Athens,

 he ends up on trial for treason in the year that Themistocles is archon,

 and thus kind of overseeing the trial.

 So it's a pretty big piece of political theatre,

 but that Themistocles is having to engage with,

 you know, having taken on this role at a very early age

 that you could almost, the earliest age you could take it on.

 And I think it should have proved a very instructful case

 because Miltiades is acquitted.

 And he basically stands there and says,

 you need me, I'm pretty good at what I do.

 And frankly, I can offer a lot more to the Athenian state.

 You're going to get more out of me by letting me go

 and letting me do my thing than you are by committing me,

 you know, sentencing me for treason.

 And so Miltiades is acquitted,

 and he sort of goes off on a new campaign.

 And then the other thing that sort of happens during the year,

 so he's only archon for a year,

 that was the way it worked, and then a new person was elected.

 The other thing that seems to have started moving

 during this period of time is Athens takes a look at its port

 that it uses, which at this time was a wide bay

 on the southern coast of Attica called Phalaron.

 It's not the port that is the modern port of Athens today,

 that's Piraeus.

 And it's in this moment, supposedly,

 that Athens starts to develop the Piraeus for the first time

 as a better, bigger, more protected,

 more defensible port area than Phalaron is.

 Now, of course, down the line, with the benefit of hindsight,

 this will be an extremely important decision for these Athenians.

 And really become kind of synonymous with

 what Athens is famous for, you know, kind of mastery at sea.

 Lots of people would like to,

 when they're telling the story of Themistocles' career,

 they'd like to put Themistocles front and centre

 in machinating that decision for the Athenians.

 While he was archon, he made them turn to the Piraeus.

 I think that's a pretty big, tall order

 for people that young and for a year

 to completely get an entire city to change its mind

 about its kind of military and civilian harbour.

 So I suspect it was something that was in the works,

 but which he may well have been very positive about as well.

 But yeah, those are the two kind of big issues

 that kind of come up during his year as archon.

So we've mentioned Persia, we've mentioned the provocation,

 and we've mentioned the first Persian invasion.

 Let's skip a little bit ahead to the Battle of Marathon.

 Persia's invading, which must be terrifying.

 Is Themistocles involved in that battle?

 So Themistocles, we are pretty sure,

 would have been fighting at Marathon.

 I would say we are beyond sure, in fact,

 that he was definitely there.

 And stories are later told about him being really quite annoyed

 that he doesn't get as much glory given to him

 as some other people get after the battle.

 So he's there fighting as part of his political,

 his new political kind of tribe organization

 that was one of the big rejigs of Cleisthenes back in 508.

 And it is an extraordinary success.

 The Persians have a massive fleet and navy and army.

 They turn up on the shores of Marathon outside of Athens.

 It is this astounding victory that is had at Miltiades,

 is there involved as the sort of leading Athenian general and others.

 And then, you know, what's even more, I think,

 kind of meaningful for the Athenians

 is that the Persian king had brought with him

 the now very old exiled tyrant

 that Athens had chucked out back in 508

 with the intention of reinstating him

 as tyrant ruler of Athens.

 So this was not just the Persians bearing down on Athens

 to sort of give them a whacking,

 but actually to take away from them the political system

 that they had now begun to really take to heart

 over the last almost 20 years.

 And so the Athenians were fighting for not just their freedom,

 but for literally for their way of life, their political life.

 And when the Persian king, the Persians are defeated

 and they sail away again,

 it must have felt to kind of, you know, for all,

 like they had once again proved the value of that political system.

 Absolutely.

 So let's go back to Miltiades for a little bit.

 When the battle is over,

 he is obviously a large part of winning that battle.

 How does Athens reward this great general?

 Do we see him being able to retire and everyone loves him?

 Or do things take a bit of a turn?

 Yeah, a bit of a turn, yeah.

 I mean, this is one of those moments early on

 in the story of Athenian democracy

 where you see a different side to Athenian democracy,

 a rather unpleasant underbelly, one might say,

 which is post the battle,

 Themistocles might be annoyed that he hasn't been given

 as much honor as others,

 and one of his great rivals of his generation

 that he's constantly rivaling with throughout his career,

 which is a guy called Aristides.

 Aristides is given the honor of standing guard

 over all the loot they nicked off the Persians

 on the battlefield of Marathon,

 because he seemed to be that trustworthy

 that he's not going to run off with any of it himself,

 and Themistocles isn't given that role.

 So you can see how Themistocles feels like he's perhaps

 not being given his dues.

 The level of Miltiades and of the other military generals

 that are leading the battle,

 there's a real tension afterwards

 as to how to commemorate this victory.

 Is it the victory of the collective people of Athens,

 and therefore any memorials to this victory

 should be the Athenian people did this?

 Or is it the moment when the individual brilliance

 of a general who, in the case of the stories

 of the Battle of Marathon and Miltiades,

 chose the moment to attack and then decided

 on the sort of method and formation of the attack,

 and may well have been strategically absolutely key

 to the Athenians winning the victory that they did?

 Is it a moment where those individuals

 can be given that kind of individual recognition?

 And what becomes pretty clear pretty quickly

 in the years after Marathon, as Marathon shakes out,

 is that the Athenians do not want

 individual commemoration of success

 over and above the collective commemoration of success.

 And they're pretty quick to slap anyone down

 who tries to make it about them

 versus being about the people of Athens.

 And that then gathers steam in the 480s

 in a different format, which is the introduction of ostracism.

 Ostracism, we get the word,

 because what the Athenians had was a process whereby

 if they were really annoyed,

 if the collective Athenian weren't really annoyed at someone,

 they gathered together and they all voted

 and they wrote the name of somebody

 on a discarded piece of pottery,

 which in Greek is known as an ostraca,

 or the ostracon, and many of them are called ostraca.

 And then they would count up these ostraca

 in the vote of the ostraca, the ostracism.

 And the person with the most votes

 would be chucked out of Athens for 10 years.

 Can you imagine doing that today?

 No, no, no, I mean, it's bonkers.

 We would like to do it, you know.

 No comment.

 The thing was that this system, this option of ostracism,

 had probably been in the system since at least 508,

 you know, if possibly even before,

 but had never been used.

 And then suddenly in the 480s,

 the Athenians turned to it.

 And of all the cases of ostracism that we know about

 in the whole of the fifth century BCE,

 a hundred year period, half of them occur in the 480s.

 So there's a sudden moment here, post-marathon,

 post this discussion about how to commemorate

 the Battle of Marathon, individual versus the collective,

 where the Athenians then start to, as a people,

 utilize tools at their disposal, like ostracism,

 in a way they've never done before,

 and at a pace to get rid of individuals

 that they simply don't like.

 And that begins, you know, with a couple of people

 who have a bit of a shady association with the Persians.

 Okay, they might think of treason, point of view treason,

 but it morphs quite quickly into people

 who are frankly just felt to be too big for their boots

 and trying to put the emphasis too much

 on the individual versus on the collective.

 And that will become the absolute key message,

 I think, for anyone trying to rise up

 through the Athenian system

 and play a fundamental role in Athenian political life.

 If they don't learn that message,

 they are toast, that there is a very fine line to walk

 between coming to enough prominence

 for people to hear and listen to you

 and follow your advice and your suggested course of action,

 being dominant enough to have your voice heard

 and being too dominant that the system turns against you

 and feels like it has become too much about you

 and not enough about the collective citizen body.

 So it sounds like he's already taken part,

 he's overseen this trial of one of his peers,

 he's seeing all of these ostracisms.

 It looks like he has two choices.

 One is to be quiet and ordinary

 and the other is to be extraordinary and really loud,

 which is more risky.

 So which choice do we see him take in the 480s?

 It's definitely the latter.

 What's really interesting is that

 during those ostracism votes in the 480s,

 we have surviving as direct archaeological evidence for us.

 The ostraca pieces, right?

 Because once they've voted and counted up,

 they were just discarded into sort of old wells and buried,

 which is fantastic because archaeologists

 can come along and dig them up.

 And so we get these kind of caches of ostracism votes

 that we can then recount up

 and we can get a sense of what the votes might have been.

 And it's clear in most of these votes through the 480s

 that Themistocles is getting some votes.

 Some people are going,

 no, the person I want to see got rid of is Themistocles.

 He's just never the person with the most votes.

 So clearly he is not going quietly.

 He is not annoying and falling foul

 of that fine, delicate tightrope balance

 for at least some people.

 It's just not enough,

 or other people are falling foul of it more.

 At the end of the 480s

 is when he really comes into prominence,

 again, as part of the Athenian political discussions,

 because that's when Athens discovers

 a new seam of silver at its silver mines in Laurion.

 And these silver mines have been going for ages.

 People have thought they'd dried up.

 But anyway, in the fall, about at 483/2,

 they discover this brand new massive seam of silver.

 And of course, it's now kind of this people power system,

 still not using the word democracy to describe itself,

 but increasingly as we've got a sense of it,

 the people rule.

 So they all get together to discuss what to do with it.

 And on the one hand,

 some people are advocating that

 the silver should be extracted

 and then its value should be divided up equally

 and every citizen should be given an equal amount.

 That's what you do in a system of equality.

 And there's Themistocles arguing on the other hand

 that actually no, what we should do

 is take the whole amount

 and use this as a windfall payment

 to create for ourselves a fleet

 that will catapult Athens into the premier position,

 premier naval fleet

 and premier naval power in the Aegean.

 You can't take it away from Themistocles, I think.

 That is a brilliant tactical move,

 irrespective of what's going to happen

 a couple of years down the line,

 which is Persia is going to come back with a big Navy.

 But within that context of just the Greek context,

 it was a brilliant move

 because two things were very clear at that stage.

 One is Athens had got a bit better

 in terms of land victories

 and started having some land victories.

 But it was never going to be able to challenge

 the really big land powers.

 They were the Spartans with their Spartan warriors.

 They were the other bigger landed states

 that could just field more troops.

 On land, it was never going to dominate.

 But at sea, the question of domination was open

 and it could, with this windfall,

 catapult itself to the forefront of the line.

 The other second point was

 if Athens was having trouble

 with other Greek city-states at the time

 that this debate was happening in the 480s,

 it really was with some of the smaller islands

 just off the coast of Athens,

 particularly Aegina,

 that it was having a real problem.

 And Aegina had a fleet because it was an island.

 What else could it have?

 And it was raiding the Athenian coastline

 on a fairly regular basis.

 So in this context,

 when actually Greek city-states

 spent a lot of time fighting one another.

 Pumping the money as this massive windfall

 into putting yourself as the premier

 seaborne player in the Greek world

 was a really astute move.

 Very clever.

 It has always been painted to me, at least,

 that he was the sole voice that realized

 that, I mean, spoiler alert,

 we call it the first Persian invasion, as you say.

 They came back.

 Second Persian invasion, the sequel.

 That it's painted as Themistocles

 was the only one who knew

 they were going to return one day

 and that he was the only one that was arguing

 that they should build up their military force

 instead of a lot of grapes and wine

 and girls and song.

 Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

 In those biographies,

 particularly when we think about Plutarch

 writing centuries later,

 this is set up as for Themistocles

 having the foresight and the intuition

 to understand what this fleet

 would come to be used for.

 Plutarch spends quite a lot of time

 talking about the fact that

 though the fact that Themistocles knew this,

 he realized that this was not an argument yet

 that would convince anyone else

 because everyone else thought

 the Persians had gone away for good.

 And so if he wanted to win the argument,

 he realized, even more cleverly,

 that he would have to make the argument

 based on other more local enemies and actors

 like Aegina, for instance.

 So we do have a picture painted for us

 in the much later sources

 of somebody who is uniquely foresightful

 and able to manipulate the Athenian people

 into a course of action

 which they didn't need anyone,

 you know, they didn't realize

 what it was really all about.

 Now, I find that a bit of a stretch

 That Themistocles was the only one in Athens

 that had any inkling

 that the Persians would come back.

 And I don't think we need to believe that

 for it still to have been an argument

 that made sense, you know,

 and won the day as it did in the assembly.

 And the Athenians go,

 all right, yeah, let's do this.

 Let's take the initiative.

 Let's go on the offensive.

 Let's build that fleet

 and let's become a naval power

 on our own right.

 Persian invasion 2 Electric Boogaloo,

 they're on their way back.

 What's happening in Athens

 and how are the Persians

 actually arriving into Greece itself?

 What's Themistocles having

 to think about at this point?

 Yeah, I mean, you know, Themistocles

 is not the kind of leader of Athens, right?

 At any point, he gets eventually

 commissioned to sort of lead

 the Athenian fleet,

 but there's also an Athenian

 land army commander.

 And more importantly,

 they're all linked up with

 a number of other Greek city states

 who are willing to put up forces

 to defend against the Persians.

 And that kind of overall

 pan-Greek fleet, if you like,

 has an overall commander as well.

 It was not Themistocles.

 In that sense, he's operating

 within a nexus of a number

 of powerful and important voices

 that he's constantly having to

 think through around influence

 and contend with.

 And you're right, you know,

 so the Persians come back.

 The Persians come back

 with a land army bigger than anything

 that's ever been seen before

 and a fleet that's bigger

 than anything that's been seen before.

 And they move through.

 The land army kind of

 marches across northern Greece

 with the fleet following it

 along the coastline,

 marches down through Greece

 and effectively meets

 relatively little opposition.

 Most Greek city states

 capitulate in one form or another.

 So we have to remember,

 there are, we think,

 probably about a thousand

 Greek city states in total.

 And the number of Greek city states

 who were actually listed

 in the memorials

 after the Persian invasion

 as having stood up to the Persians,

 total 31.

 So it gives us a sense of actually,

 when people talk about this

 as a moment when

 all of Greece came together,

 it's not really all of Greece.

 It's 31 Greek city states

 that are plucky enough

 and courageous enough

 to not sort of give way.

 But this land army

 is sweeping down through Greece.

 It gets held up

 for a brief while at Thermopylae,

 queue the Spartans,

 brilliant land forces,

 Leonidas, the 300 Spartans,

 all of that jazz.

 They are kind of holding

 a line off the coast of Thermopylae

 at a place called Artemisium.

 Themistocles is there.

 They're engaging with the Persian fleet

 at Artemisium

 as Thermopylae is going on.

 When the Spartans are eventually all killed

 and the Persians sweep down

 past Thermopylae,

 there's no point holding

 a line at Artemisium.

 So the Greek fleet falls back

 to south of Athens,

 to the small island of Salamis,

 just off the southern coast

 of the territory of Athens, of Attica.

 And that's the point when

 we hear of the Athenians themselves

 voting and deciding

 to evacuate their own city.

 And the stories are that Thermistocles

 is heavily involved with this decision.

 And so the Athenians are scarpering.

 A number have come over

 to the island of Salamis to escape

 and they are having to watch

 as the city of Athens goes up in smoke.

 The Persians turn up and they burn it.

 Because if you think about it,

 this is payback.

 Still, the Ionian revolt

 that happened back almost 20 years

 previously in 499

 and to the Athenian involvement in it,

 which involved the Athenians

 actually setting fire to

 a number of really important

 Persian cities and particularly

 some of the Persian temples.

 So this is payback now.

 The Persians turn up

 and they burn Athens to the ground.

 So the question at this point becomes

 in 480, around about September 480,

 is where do the Athenians

 and the rest of the Greeks

 decide to make their stand?

 And most of the Greeks

 don't want it to be in Salamis.

 They want to withdraw

 down further south,

 past the Isthmus,

 that tiny little narrow corridor of land

 that connects, if you like,

 the main land of Greece

 with the Peloponnese main land of Greece.

 And they want to go south of the Isthmus

 and they want to use the land forces

 to kind of block the Isthmus

 and then they want to use the fleet

 to guard around that being encircled.

 But Themistocles is desperately keen

 to keep everyone at Salamis.

 And again, this is where the stories

 talk about his sort of insight

 and brilliance and his kind of

 and cunning plan

 to try and entice the Persian fleet

 into the very narrow straits of water

 between the island of Salamis

 and the mainland of Attica.

 Because in those narrow straits

 it will be more about

 the maneuverability

 and tactical superiority of your ships

 and those who know the waters

 and where things get shallow

 and where they don't

 and the currents and all of that jazz,

 more than it will be about

 sheer numbers of ships.

 Now I've been to Eleusis

 and I've kind of looked out

 to the island of Salamis.

 It really is a narrow strait.

 So how does the battle work?

 Yeah, I mean, it is a very narrow strait

 and one of the things

 that now comes to the fore

 in his naval kind of battle parlance

 is the design of the ships

 that are fighting on both sides.

 So the Persian fleet had built bigger ships

 that could cover greater distances

 and be at open sea for longer

 because they had to travel further.

 They had to come all the way around

 from Persia and descend down

 the coast of Greece.

 So these are bigger ships

 that are, as a result, less maneuverable.

 They've also been in the water for longer

 because they've had a long journey

 and these ships, as a result,

 the wood of the ships sort of absorbed water

 which made them heavier,

 which made them even less maneuverable

 versus the Athenians

 that had in their new fleet building

 just of a couple of years before

 had invested heavily

 in a kind of new design of warship

 that was known as a trireme.

 And this was three banks of oars,

 three rows trireme.

 About 150 people rowing in total.

 And fundamentally it was built

 not for big open sea crossings

 but for short, sharp, fast engagements

 and battles.

 And so it was given a battering ram

 at the front of the ship

 that was covered in bronze.

 And its main purpose was to row

 really fast, really quickly

 at an enemy ship,

 send the battering ram

 bashing through the side of the ship.

 Then you reverse

 and you allow the ship to sink

 and job done

 and you move on to the next one.

 So these were designed

 to be more maneuverable.

 They were designed to be more agile

 and more kind of ferocious

 in close combat, if you like,

 in naval terms.

 But also the Athenians

 have been able to draw

 all of their ships out of the water

 on the beaches at Salamis

 and dry them out to a certain extent

 on the beaches at Salamis

 so that they were less waterlogged

 and even more maneuverable.

 And then on top of that

 the Athenians knew the straits.

 They knew where actually

 things get very shallow very quickly,

 which is true.

 When you do a sort of,

 I don't know what the technical term for it is,

 but you do a sort of 3D

 cut in half of the strait

 so you see where the sort of

 the water and the depth

 of the water goes at each point.

 Actually it's quite shallow

 for quite a lot of that narrow strait

 and there's only really

 a very deep part in the very middle.

 And so the Persians wouldn't know that.

 They wouldn't have been used

 to sailing in the strait.

 The Athenians and other Greeks

 would have done.

 So they would have known the straits.

 They would have known where they could sail

 without getting beached.

 And of course if a ship got beached

 then it was just a sitting duck to be round.

 And on top of that

 there were also very difficult currents

 because that water is flowing fast

 around the island of Salamis

 and out the back and out.

 So again, you had to know

 and be experienced

 in the waters of the region

 to be able to work effectively within it.

 Fundamentally, after all

 it was a narrow strait

 which meant only a few ships

 could be engaging really at any one time.

 And you couldn't be encircled.

 So the Persian technique

 with a vast number of ships

 was simply to spread out

 and envelop you

 like the tentacles of an octopus

 in a circle

 so that all of the ships couldn't escape

 and then they could take their time

 picking off the ships as they wanted to.

 They do that in the Straits of Salamis.

 So with this battle

 I think again in the stories that we're told

 and definitely in that 300 movie sequel

 Themistocles is the single-handed leader

 the saviour of the Greek world

 in that movie particularly.

 Is it a case that Themistocles

 is winning this by himself

 or is it more of a case

 that teamwork makes the dream work?

 Well, he's certainly not winning it by himself

 without everyone showing up

 and Herodotus is quite clear

 that there are lots of individuals

 who do brave things that day

 on both sides to be honest.

 But what comes to be associated

 as Themistocles’ main contribution

 is that in the night before the battle

 effectively the Greek nerve is failing completely

 and he's tried lots of ways

 to hold the Greek nerve

 to stay at Salamis and take on the Persians.

 He's tried interpreting religious omens

 like utterances from the Oracle of Delphi

 to sort of stiffen resolve.

 He's tried threats.

 He's tried saying

 look if you leave here

 I'm going to take the entire Athenian fleet

 which is the biggest contingent

 and we're going to sail off

 to the western Mediterranean to Sicily

 and we're going to allow you guys

 just to be crushed

 so sayonara.

 And then he's tried

 brilliant kind of convincing tactics

 going look let's go

 and invite some local gods

 to come and be on board our ships

 and help us even more.

 So he sends this ship off

 to a nearby island

 which is supposed to be the home

 of a particular god

 with a very nice couch

 on the deck of the ship

 and they sort of ceremoniously

 encourage the god

 to come and take up residence

 on the couch

 and then row him back

 to be part of the Greek fleet.

 So he's tried all these techniques

 but it's still not working effectively.

 The Greek nerve is failing

 and so supposedly what he does

 we're told in all the sources

 is that he sends his slave at night

 across the Greek lines

 to the Persian camp

 to get a message

 to the Persian king

 to say Themistocles wants to

 actually change sides

 he wants to commit treason

 he wants to come over to the Persians

 and as a token of his goodwill

 to the Persian king

 he wants to let the Persian king know

 that the Greeks are all about to flee

 and what the Persian king should do

 is send in the ships

 immediately into the Persian Straits

 otherwise everyone's going to flee

 and he won't get the victory he wants.

 Now with the benefit of hindsight

 that this turns out to be brilliant tactics

 to bring the Persians into the Straits

 and then there is a Greek victory

 what this is often put forward as

 nearly always put forward as

 is Themistocles tricking the Persian king

 a brilliant ruse to trick the Persian king

 but you know we have to say

 that at the same time

 this was a hugely risky move

 for Themistocles

 because if any of the Greeks

 had found out about it

 it was Themistocles committing treason

 full stop.

 Oh yeah of course.

 And you know kind of

 he would have been dealt with

 if the Greeks had found out about it

 you know pretty harshly equally

 you know was this Themistocles

 bright clever Themistocles

 looking at this

 and taking a view of it

 and saying well look you know

 if it works I still think

 the battle should happen here

 so you know as the best tactical place

 to have the battle

 so it brings on the battle

 and if we lose well you know

 I've buttered my toast on both sides

 and I'm well in with the Persian king as well

 so you know it is very hard

 to get a sense of

 of what Themistocles

 was really intending here

 in my view you know

 and what he goes on to do later in life

 I see it you know

 as his just fundamental frustration

 with the Greeks

 and his true and utter belief

 that this was actually the best place

 for them to make their stand

 and he's run out of other options

 to convince them to do so

 and so he's got to sort of force the battle

 but he does so it cannot be denied

 a huge personal risk.

 You mentioned the Delphic oracle there

 and can we talk more about this specific prophecy

 because I think it's one of my favourite examples

 of a really vague answer

 Yeah so I mean you know several years before

 when Athenians had sort of started hearing

 about the Persians sort of coming for them

 they they'd sent some ambassadors

 to the the Delphic oracle

 the most premier kind of oracular

 you know respondent oracle of Apollo

 and sort of asked you know what should be done

 and the first response

 apparently to these Athenian ambassadors

 was run away run away you know

 the Athenian ambassadors were like

 we can't go back with that answer

 you know give us another answer

 and so this you know famously enigmatic

 and ambiguous answer came back

 which is trust in your wooden walls

 and that actually as we come to understand

 the Delphic oracle

 you know that's not an unusually ambiguous thing

 to come out of the oracle

 lots of their responses of the oracle were ambiguous

 and it helps us understand

 what the Delphic oracle was in reality

 it wasn't a kind of mystic meg

 telling you exactly what your future would be

 People tend to characterize the Delphic oracle now

 as what we might call a sense-making mechanism

 or a kind of indicator to more debate

 discussion and insight

 because the Athenians had to take that answer back

 and they sat there in their assembly

 discussing what it meant

 you know and people were saying

 well on the one hand

 it could mean the wooden old wooden walls

 of the Acropolis at the heart of Athens

 where one day the Parthenon would be built

 you know we should all just barricade ourselves

 up on top of the Acropolis and wait it out

 others like Themistocles were arguing

 that actually no it meant the wooden walls

 of those ships that they'd just built

 you know and we should trust in the fleet

 and that means we should evacuate Athens

 etc etc

 So it was a push for the Athenians

 to then sort of have to make their own decision

 it wasn't that the oracle gave them the answer

 the oracle gave them an answer

 which they then had to debate

 and fundamentally at the end of the day

 they had to decide how to act.

 So that's the important takeaway

 is that the oracle at Delphi was not a magic eight ball…

 Yeah you know one person once said to me

 a businessman when I was talking to him about Delphi

 once said to me

 oh so Delphi sounds a bit like a management consultant

 you pay them quite a bit of money

 they give you some kind of answer

 leave you basically with the decision

 to make about what you're going to do

 and you know there is quite a lot of truth in that

 that's what the Delphic oracle was

 and fundamentally if you see people turn up at the oracle

 expecting a direct and clear answer

 they normally are chastised for having misunderstood

 what the whole point in coming was.

 I mean I couldn't have an episode

 without talking about Delphi

 for at least two minutes with you.

 One of my favourite places in the world!

 Me too!

 So let's go back to Salamis

 it's a big success

 Themistocles, if he's been paying attention,

 has seen that characters who are extraordinary

 as we mentioned

 may have a little bit of a knockback

 Does he manage to rein in his ego after 480?

 I think this is fascinating

 this for me is his first big rise and fall

 you know here he is

 he's commanded the Athenian fleet

 he's obviously a big voice at Salamis

 he's obviously done so much to bring about

 the battle and force the battle

 and after the battle

 there's quite a big debate around

 who should be given the prizes

 because they did have prizes

 for sort of the best and most valiant

 everyone votes for themselves first we're told

 and then votes for Themistocles second

 but when everyone votes again

 and you know the indication is

 well should we all go for Themistocles

 no one can agree on who to give this prize to

 so they don't give it to anyone

 so you know you can see this tension

 immediately after the battle

 and what's even more fascinating

 is that that's a sea victory

 480 battle of Salamis

 there's still a big Persian land army to defeat

 but obviously Salamis gives the Greeks momentum

 and encourages more Greeks to join

 the kind of Greek forces

 and so the next year in 479

 at the battle of Plataea

 you get the big land battle

 where the Greeks again

 then defeat the Persians on land

 and the Persians then retreat completely

 Themistocles is nowhere to be seen

 he completely drops out of view

 entirely after Salamis

 Plutarch is is really quite embarrassed by this

 you know here's the story of a guy

 that you know is supposed to be all about

 you know fame and you should emulate

 and so he just completely sort of covers over it

 and moves on the story very quickly

 Themistocles comes back into favor

 but it is a classic example I think

 of Themistocles having been really important

 to the Athenian people at a moment

 and then when the stakes change

 when the focus changes to land

 and to land battles

 and to the reclaiming of the city

 you know Themistocles is not the person

 they're listening to

 and they drop him as fast as they rose him up

 you know and listen to him in the first place

 so it's a rise and fall moment

 that happens very very quickly

 after this this seemingly kind of you know

 what will become kind of the first key moment

 that Themistocles is associated with him

 which is fame centers around the battle of Salamis

 he's dropped like a stone afterwards

 and he has to in the through the 470s

 he has to kind of if you like reinvent himself

 and come up with another issue

 that he can sort of pin himself to

 and get the Athenian attention again

 and that new issue turns out to be wall building.

 Okay so in an effort to stay relevant

 he's got to come up with a new thing to pull focus.

 Yeah and you know kind of that thing for him

 is saying to the Athenian people

 we need to build a massive and stout set

 city walls around Athens

 because although the Persians have gone off

 actually remember the Greeks spend most of their time

 fighting against one another

 we need to be better protected

 and he manages to whip up the Athenians

 into a sort of frenzy of wall building

 around the city in the 470s

 and you know kind of this is the second later on thing

 that he will become kind of infamous

 for being associated with

 and those walls that run around the city of Athens

 and also walls that they started building

 around the new port at Piraeus

 will eventually later on in the 5th century

 be connected by long walls

 that connect the Piraeus with the city of Athens

 making Athens as a city extremely defendable

 against attack and able to withstand

 a kind of long-term siege

 because of their access to the port and thus to the sea.

 So it sounds like growing up in a nascent radical democracy

 it did allow someone with his background to rise

 but it also sounds like the Demos was quite fickle

 and that they weren't necessarily going to

 carry on giving him the credit

 that he may have thought he was due

 he had to continually carry on coming up with things

 to make himself front and centre

 I mean what are the options?

 Fade into obscurity or get kicked out?

 Yeah you know kind of and I think this was the

 this is the harsh reality of Athenian democracy

 that we rarely talk about I think

 that it was it used people up and chewed them out

 and sent them on their way on a very regular basis

 and there are any number of figures

 that we could look at during the 5th and 4th century

 that it does this to

 and what's really I think important in the 470s

 is that this is the period

 that the Athenian political system becomes democracy

 and the Athenians start calling it democracy

 and using the word democratia

 and in fact we know that names

 the name for a boy born in the 470s

 like democritos becomes a really popular name

 to call your son democracy

 sort of thing in this period

 and this is the period when you know

 they really are as a collective going

 we are something incredibly special

 we are something about people power

 that people power is fundamentally associated

 with the sea with our fleet

 you know and our ability to carry victory at sea

 and it's weirdly in the middle of that

 after Themistocles has had his kind of second rise

 if you like on the back of his wall building

 that Themistocles seems to have forgotten

 the fundamental rule about not stepping off

 the tightrope balance

 between it being about you

 and it being about the collective

 and yeah in the 470s

 he dedicates a small temple in the deme

 where he lives the small little area

 where he lives in Athens

 and it's a temple to Artemis

 absolutely great

 Artemis plus an epithet

 which is Aristobules

 Artemis the wise counselor

 the best counselor

 that's absolutely fine too

 you know absolutely great

 problem is he we're told

 he puts a bust of himself

 in the temple precinct

 so this is a pretty unsubtle message

 that you know actually

 all the Athenians should all be worshiping

 Themistocles for his wisdom

 and his counsel

 this goes down like an utter lead balloon

 I can imagine

 they're going like

 they have the right to do this

 and tell us what we should be doing

 and that begins a process

 through the rest of the 470s

 where just momentum starts to gather

 against Themistocles

 and we hear that by 471

 another ostracism takes place

 and this time the person

 with the biggest number of votes

 is Themistocles

 and so he's had his rise and fall

 by Salamis

 he's had his rise

 on the back of city walls

 and then he seems to muck it up himself

 entirely through the rest of the 470s

 and ends the 470s

 ostracized from Athens for 10 years.

 So do we think it's just this one temple

 that caused it

 or maybe was he just quite abrasive

 and egocentric

 do we get any hint?

 Yeah I mean Plutarch

 gives us lots of stories

 of similar kinds of arrogant statements

 that keep putting people's backs up

 and he does it in lots of different places

 he does it in the theatre

 you know the theatre was absolutely essential

 for the fledgling

 you know for the Greek democracy

 going to the theatre

 at the great Dionysia festival

 was an absolutely essential part

 of what it meant to be in Athenian

 and they stopped all business

 during the festival

 everyone was supposed to attend

 all the citizens were supposed to attend

 and Themistocles is actually the sponsor

 of a play

 so this is one of those plays

 where it's talking about Salamis

 in part

 and you know there's a very veiled

 sort of bit of the play

 that alludes to almost by name

 to Themistocles' brilliant work

 and counsel and you know everything else

 so there is an argument to be made

 that he did bring some of this upon himself

 yeah that he brings this upon himself

 and fortunately he's out.

 It must be quite difficult

 to navigate a completely new type

 of political system

 when you've grown up with it

 and you haven't been able to see

 that many peers go through the system?

 Yeah I don't know

 because you know he has!

 He's seeing people come and go

 up and down rise and fall

 and so it is it is an extraordinary

 kind of unanswerable

 that either he did just become

 you know he just got to the point

 where he was like well you know

 I really do believe I'm this important

 but he forgot all the lessons

 you know a couple of decades

 of career in Athenian politics

 should have drummed into him

 and it and it's quite remarkable

 what I don't think he realized

 was was quite how much

 tide could turn you know so quickly

 because in 471 he's he's exiled

 he's ostracized now okay

 you have to spend 10 years

 living somewhere else

 and you could come back

 and he could reclaim his Athenian life

 no no problem

 but what happens very quickly afterwards

 is that the people don't let this go

 and the people who really dislike him

 use this as an opportunity

 to gather even more momentum

 and they get him pretty quickly

 associated with a plot

 to try and bring back

 the Persian king again

 and effectively he finds himself

 just a couple of years later

 on trial for treason in Athens

 and he doesn't go back

 he's he's exiled

 he's totally has to come back

 to stand trial

 he's like I'm not coming back

 to stand trial

 so he doesn't come back in person

 and so he's tried in absentia

 and he is found guilty

 and he is sentenced to death

 so he's gone from being

 you know kind of

 a really important figure

 in Athenian politics

 a savior of Athens twice perhaps

 to by the early 460s

 he is guilty of treason

 and he is sentenced to death

 and then there is no way back.

 So he's in exile

 he can't go home

 or he'll be killed

 he's been accused of

 cozying up to Persia

 I'm guessing

 that a sensible person

 wouldn't prove all of his

 enemies right by going to Persia

 would he?

 Yeah I mean the issue is

 he tries to find somewhere else

 to go and safely sit

 he flies up to

 and goes up to northern Greece

 to some of the

 the kind of ethnic tribes

 and kingdoms in northern Greece

 and tries to sort of

 hide up there

 but basically now

 that the Athenian

 and the and particularly

 the Spartan sort of

 thirst for Themistocles

 his blood has got hot

 and they pursue him

 and he quickly realizes

 that there's basically going to be

 nowhere in the Greek world

 that he is actually going to be safe

 and so in the mid 460s

 you know he's in his mid 50s

 by this stage

 you know young man

 like particularly in ancient terms

 he looks around

 and he makes what I again

 I think is an extraordinarily

 courageous decision

 and he sort of says

 look the only place I can go

 potentially have a chance

 is Persia

 and so he sets sail

 you know he gets on board a boat

 manages to get across

 to the Persian territory

 of modern-day Turkey

 and then has to make his way secretly

 all the way through

 into the interior of the Persian empire

 to where the court of the king is

 all of this time

 there's a bounty on his head

 and he's had to leave

 everything behind

 you know he's

 we think his wife

 his children

 all of his money

 his fortune

 everything

 and somehow we're told

 by the sources

 he manages to get a session

 in front of the Persian king

 now this might be

 the same king

 that he tricked at Salamis

 or it might be his son

 who's just taken over

 because we're not quite sure

 of the years

 and at the timings

 and one of the two

 but it's either the guy he tricked

 or his son

 who you know obviously

 knows the name of Themistocles

 and knows the role

 that this this guy has played

 so we know that the Persians hold a grudge

 yeah yeah as the bounty on his head

 but you know what he

 what we're told in the sources

 is that he he says

 to the Persian king says look

 give me a year

 to learn Persian

 so that I can speak to you

 in your own language

 and I can be of use to you

 I can be of use to you

 and the Persian king

 is said to grant that request

 and then Themistocles

 spends an entire year

 ferociously learning Persian

 and he's said to become

 the Greek who knew

 how to speak Persian best

 in all of in all of

 kind of Greek history

 you know no one

 learnt it better than he did

 so and he really did

 manage to get himself

 very very quickly

 completely change his his colors

 and and live and speak

 and fight for his life

 in a completely different language

 and culture

 and but he became

 a trusted and close confidant

 of the Persian king

 more so than any other

 Greek had been before him

 so it is really a remarkable

 third rise if you like

 a third reinvention

 of Themistocles

 in these final decades of his life

 in which he has to

 quite literally

 totally reinvent himself.

 I'm trying to put myself

 in his shoes

 and I'm finding that

 I can't really blame him

 for deciding to make this

 swerve if you like

 I think if I was looking

 back at my career

 and the city that I'd worked

 so hard to help

 had thrown me out

 and then condemned me

 to death for treason

 I think I would lose

 quite a lot of loyalty.

 Yeah I mean you know

 kind of when he happily

 beds down and lives

 through the rest of the

 60s the Persian king

 gives him a living

 sort of basically

 the three different cities

 that he gets to sort of

 keep the income from

 and he issues his own coins

 and you know he has

 a pretty good couple of years

 and then in 459

 by this time he's

 just about mid 60s

 the Persian king comes to him

 and says right

 I've dealt with a few rebellions

 that I had to sort out

 I am now ready to take

 the fight back to Greece

 and it's now time for you to

 deliver on your promise

 of being useful

 and tell me how to

 finally defeat Greece

 you know you're the one

 who's going to

 mastermind my campaign

 and so he

 Themistocles is finally

 at this point

 he's faced with

 the ultimate decision

 does he really

 turn on the Greeks

 in the way that

 the Greeks turned on him

 and lead a campaign

 you know of the Persian king

 to defeat Greece

 once and for all

 or does he do

 the only other thing

 he can do

 because there's nowhere else

 he can go

 he can't go back to Greece

 he won't be safe

 he doesn't do what

 the Persian king asks of him

 there is nowhere else

 for him to go

 and he chooses instead

 to commit suicide

 and to take

 what in Persian culture

 and Greek culture at the time

 was considered

 the kind of honorable

 way out

 and he's respected

 for that by the Persian king

 who you know

 gives him a proper funeral

 and a nice tomb

 in the cities

 that he'd been sort of

 living and ruling over

 and so we get this

 very odd picture

 for someone who is

 a Greek hero

 is that when he died

 in 459 in the mid 60s

 he was honored by the Persians

 but he was still

 someone who had been

 sentenced to death

 for treason

 and a hated figure

 within Greece

 and particularly Athens

 and so we're left

 with this question of

 how does he end up

 becoming this Greek hero

 that by the time

 that Thucydides is writing

 so at the end

 of the 5th century BCE

 Thucydides can write

 that he is

 Themistocles

 is the most illustrious

 Greek of his time

It's just a little bit

 too late for Themistocles then

 It's a little bit too late

 you know kind of

 but I think

 the lesson for me

 or kind of

 when I was writing this

 but the thing that

 two things sort of

 really struck home

 for me writing this

 but one is that

 however successful

 anyone's career appears

 to be

 when you look closely

 you'll find that there is

 an awful lot of rise and fall

 in everyone's career

 even those of the most successful

 and equally I think

 most importantly

 that no decision

 when viewed through hindsight

 successful people's careers

 can often look very assured

 that they knew

 what they were doing

 that every step

 was obviously going to lead

 to the next successful step

 and actually that's not

 how careers are lived

 and that's not how lives are lived

 and for me

 writing this biography

 was a really important reminder

 that you know

 actually for Themistocles

 there was no assuredness

 any point he made

 as many bad calls

 as he did good calls

 and you know

 he had all of these rises and falls

 and he certainly didn't know

 where his decision was

 going to take him

 the second thing

 that kind of came to me

 writing this book

 is you're left with Themistocles

 when he dies

 in this very odd

 limbo of reputation

 and yet very quickly

 he gets massively rehabilitated

 to become this Greek hero

 and that needs explaining

 you know

 it's not Themistocles doing that

 it's the world doing that

 or the Greek world doing that

 retelling its history

 retelling it the story

 of its past to itself

 because it needs to

 and trying to understand that need

 I think is really important

 in the 450s

 that's the decade

 when Athens

 really starts to rule an empire

 that's when the

 the Delian League

 the kind of alliance of ships

 that it was leading

 to take the fight to Persia

 morphs into effectively

 the Athenian imperial fleet

 that goes around

 throwing its weight around

 and forcing people

 to become part of the Athenian empire

 and it's really in the 450s

 that Athens kind of rises

 to this great height

 of power and influence

 across the Aegean

 it's going to be in the 440s

 that they then start using

 the money from that empire

 to build the Parthenon

 it's a great kind of monument

 to Athenian democracy

 on the top of the Acropolis

 a monument to democracy

 and empire really

 and Athens is absolutely

 at the height of its game

 and when it looks at itself

 and tells the story of its rise

 to itself

 suddenly the fleet

 and its power at sea

 becomes absolutely essential

 to that narrative

 and whom was best associated

 with that sea fleet

 and power at sea story

 it was Themistocles

 so by the big time

 we get into the late 450s

 and into the 440s

 actually Athens has had

 to completely conveniently

 and brilliantly forget

 that Themistocles died

 convicted of treason

 and rehabilitate him as a hero

 we know we hear a portrait of him

 was hung inside the Parthenon

 for instance

 that was there for centuries

 his sons were invited back

 to live in Athens

 all the kind of stigma

 around his name was cancelled

 and he becomes this great hero

 and then later in the

 the last decades

 of the fifth century

 when Athens will end up

 in the great Peloponnesian war

 the great Greek civil war

 against Sparta

 what will become really important

 for Athens then

 to help ensure its survival

 is its city walls

 because it has to constantly

 sort of defend itself

 against attack from other Greeks

 who is responsible

 for the city walls

 ah actually it was Themistocles

 so again this sort of

 Themistocles gets

 even more heightened

 and talked about

 as this great savior

 and architect if you like

 of Athenian greatness

 by having been fundamentally involved

 in the creation of his fleet

 and in the creation

 of its city walls

 and his reputation

 becomes so assured

 as a result

 and so kind of changed

 from the death

 from when he actually died

 that Thucydides can call him

 the most illustrious Greek

 of his time

 and then that sticks

 and in the following century

 in the fourth century

 when a lot of Athenian historians

 are sort of moaning

 about the glory days

 and the golden age

 of the fifth century

 and how it's not quite

 as good as it was

 and how people just aren't made

 as heroic as they were

 back in the day

 of the fifth century

 people like Themistocles

 you know that

 that positive reputation then

 becomes sort of ingrained

 and etched in history

 as if it were history

 rather than a convenient retelling

 that the Greeks wanted

 to tell themselves

 and which the Athenians

 particularly wanted

 to tell to themselves

 in the decades after

 Themistocles had died

 convicted of treason

 So it was less a PR campaign

 for the man

 and more of a PR campaign

 for the city

 Absolutely

 you know he benefits

 from the story

 that the city needs

 to tell itself

 about itself

 So you have written

 a modern biography

 what are the ancient sources

 that you were able to use

 that talk about Themistocles?

 So they divide into three categories

 the first in terms

 of the literary sources

 the ones that are closest

 to him in time

 are the great histories

 of Herodotus and Thucydides

 Now these are not biographies

 these are historical narratives

 and Herodotus

 has a bigger question to answer

 which is fundamentally

 what brought the Greeks

 and Persians into conflict

 with one another

 and obviously

 Themistocles is going to be

 is going to pop up in that story

 on numerous occasions

 So Herodotus gives us

 snippets of Themistocles' life

 when it becomes important

 to answering his bigger question

 and then Thucydides

 kind of picks up

 that narrative of Greek history

 and he's writing about

 the great Greek civil war

 the Peloponnesian war

 that occupies the second half

 of the fifth century

 Now obviously Themistocles

 is dead by now

 and so he's not

 an active participant

 if you like in that war

 but because of the things

 he did during his lifetime

 that suddenly become of importance

 to Athens

 the fleet, the city walls

 and a number of other things

 he becomes worthy of mention

 and when Thucydides

 is reflecting back

 that's when he kind of looks back

 and he talks about Themistocles

 being the most illustrious

 Greek of his time and era

 So we get these two

 kind of great Greek narratives

 historical narratives

 that are within the same century

 like as Themistocles

 At the same time

 sort of second category of evidence

 is the what we might call

 contemporary and near-contemporary evidence

 for Themistocles

 which is mostly archaeological

 and epigraphical

 So you know kind of in that sense

 the archaeological evidence

 is things like

 the remains of the temple

 that he set up

 that we've actually excavated

 and uncovered

 It's things like the coins

 that he issued

 when he was governor in Persia

 during the last decade of his life

 and it's things like the ostrich

 that we've managed to dig up

 that have got the kind of

 Themistocles' name on

 and so we get these contemporary

 real physical pieces of evidence

 that we can turn to

 and occasionally they're literary as well

 so things like

 Aeschylus' play

 Persians About the Battle of Salamis

 and its veiled references

 to the important role

 that Themistocles played

 So we get a really important

 category of evidence

 which is but it's snippets

 It's little kind of moments

 that emerge from that

 that contemporary record

 that we can only really make sense of

 thanks to the later literary sources

 Those are on the first time

 the Herodotus and Thucydides

 from the same century

 and then we have to travel forward

 in time

 Several centuries

 when we get to the era

 of the biography writing

 Plutarch obviously

 is the most famous

 with his life of Themistocles

 but there were others

 who wrote lives of Themistocles

 like Cornelius Nepos

 and obviously we talked

 a little bit about

 the much, much later

 kind of rhetorical treatises

 that come from people

 like Libanus of Antioch and others

 and these are stories

 that are very, very, very moralistic

 particularly Plutarch

 He's writing about lives of people

 that are positive examples

 to emulate

 and so the story we get told

 is not only far removed in time

 from the events that it's talking about

 but it is designed

 to tell a very particular narrative

 and give a very particular outcome

 and has a sort of very

 positive spin, if you like, on Themistocles

 as an individual as a result

 and so we have to take those

 much later narratives

 with a certain pinch of salt

 no doubt Plutarch was working

 and building on

 historical sources

 which were available to him

 which just haven't survived to us

 and we can do a bit of cross-referencing

 and you know

 to find out where multiple sources

 are sort of saying the same thing

 but fundamentally at the end of the day

 we have to remember

 this is not a factual biography

 that is without its own agenda

 and I think that's absolutely crucial.

 Absolutely.

 What about historians

 of the past couple of centuries?

 Has his reputation amongst historians

 changed over the recent centuries

 that he's been written about by classicists?

 Yeah you know I find it quite fascinating

 you know he's often mentioned

 right kind of I've lost count

 the number of times

 I would have mentioned his name

 in relation to the wider story

 of Greek and Athenian history

 but actually as a figure to focus in on

 he has not often been a figure

 that people choose to tell

 that kind of complete story.

 I mean it's interesting that

 if you go back to the Roman era

 sources for a moment

 you know Cicero himself

 is sitting there

 scratching his head a little bit

 going I don't quite get

 why Themistocles is so lauded

 in Athenian narratives

 and Greek narratives of history

 because at the end of the day

 he really only did two things

 you know Battle of Salamis

 and the city walls

 and he's lauded more

 than people who invented

 entire systems that people lived by

 for decades and centuries.

 So it was a bit of a puzzle for Cicero

 and I think because Themistocles' fame

 is so associated with events

 it sort of stopped people

 or prevented people in a way

 from telling that kind

 of wider biographical story.

 You know there's been a number

 of kind of attempts

 to sort of tell the biography

 and bring it into relationship

 with naval history for instance

 or kind of thinking

 about Athenian empire

 but for me it was

 it was a real revelation

 to sort of be putting

 this biography together

 and to see those rises and falls

 and that assuredness

 at complete lack of assurance

 from Themistocles

 as he was walking

 through his career

 and to understand kind of him

 as a character

 and where he came from

 particularly as an individual

 how much he benefited

 from the fact that the system

 was changing around him.

 I think there's a lot

 to be learnt and understood

 from kind of the focuses

 on these individuals

 as much as we possibly can

 and much as the evidence

 allows us to do so.

 So just to wrap it up

 what was the main impact

 that you came away from

 after you've written the book

 the main impression that you got

 that you thought really

 really struck you

 as important or surprised you maybe?

 I mean for me writing the book

 and it's dedicated

 to my two-year-old son Wilbur

 who you know is definitely

 reading this book right now.

 He's much more interested.

 But down the line

 as he grows up

 he will read this book

 as that reminder

 that no career however successful

 is actually as assured

 and linear

 as it might appear to be

 or be written up to be.

 And that actually

 the number of rises and falls

 in Themistocles' career

 he could have as a theme tune

 life is a roller coaster

 because he really is

 an up and down, up and down

 up and down career

 and that gets masked

 by the way that his reputation

 has ended up being curated

 and created around these moments

 of success.

 And so that reminder for me

 of both the nature of careers

 more generally

 and the nature of Themistocles'

 career more specifically

 is the most important takeaway

 for me from this book.

 And as a result

 kind of reminds you

 the power of writing

 and the power of history tellers

 in curating the story

 and takes you back then

 to those reminders

 that history is not

 a series of facts

 one after the other.

 History is always

 an active choice

 in the telling

 and the retelling

 of past events

 to fit a particular present purpose.

 And so I'm reminded constantly

 of those phrases

 that talk about history is not dead

 it's not even past

 or kind of the only thing

 that's really certain

 is the future

 because the past

 just keeps on changing.

 You know it reminds us

 of the power of the storytellers

 in creating our senses

 of what has come before us.

 There is this story in Plutarch

 that Themistocles is once challenged

 as to whether he would want

 to be Achilles the doer

 the great hero

 or whether he'd want to be Homer

 the great storyteller.

 And Themistocles is supposed to have said

 without a shout

 moment hesitation

 that he wanted to be Achilles.

 He wanted to be the doer

 the great hero.

 And I just wonder

 kind of you know

 when we reflect on that story

 and we reflect on the life

 of Themistocles

 and we reflect on the fact

 about the power of storytelling

 that if Themistocles

 could understand his own life

 you know with the benefit

 of all the hindsight

 and that we can now give it

 would he still

 give that same answer

 or would he recognize

 that actually the power

 lay with Homer

 the storyteller

 to tell the story of Achilles

 without which no one would know

 who Achilles was or what he did.

 There you go

 a hypothetical to think about

 after you've finished

 listening to the episode.

 I could not have asked

 for a better conclusion

 to this discussion

 and thank you so much

 for coming on the show

 to talk about this person

 who I think definitely

 more nuanced and definitely

 yeah the roller coaster

 perfect word.

 Thank you so much.

 Oh it's a pleasure.

 Thank you for having me.